Tell me, did you take a moment today to marvel at the ease in which you have access to clean, inexpensive water? Do you have an idea of how much water you use in a day—bathing, preparing meals, cleaning? (www.waterprint.net) Could you go without water for a couple of hours? A day? A week?
There’s an old saying—courtesy Benjamin Franklin—that “when the well’s dry we know the worth of water.” Certainly all of us, at one time or another, have found ourselves at the business end of a dry tap—due to perhaps a broken pipe, municipal maintenance, or other calamity. But it’s rare for citizens in the developed world to imagine walking miles for a couple of gallons gleaned from a community well, or to understand the water-quality issues much of the developing world experiences on a daily basis.
For your consideration, a round-up of recent world water headlines:
* In New Dehli, over 250 people blocked roads, damaged buses, and stoned policemen after going without water in their homes for 10 long days.
* Environmentalists warn that without urgent action, mine water as corrosive as battery acid will gush from Joburg’s Wemmer Pan and seep into the city’s streets and gardens within two years.
* Lebanon has been gradually depleting its water resources through mismanagement, pollution, or simply wasting in into the sea, with the Energy and Water Ministry estimating 1.5-billion square meters of rainwater gets washed into the sea each year. The situation is so dire that last year its experts warned Lebanon could run out of water by 2015 if current trends were not reversed.
* The delay of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project is accelerating the water crisis in China’s capital, where 17.55 million people are overdrawing inadequate supplies.
Some of you may be wondering why we should be worried about water issues outside of the US. For starters, although the developing world is certainly feeling the brunt of the global water crisis at the moment, the US is not completely in the clear. The UN estimates that within the next 50 years, the world population will increase by another 40 to 50%, and that increase includes the US. Additionally, the California Department of Water Resources has stated that if additional water supplies are not tapped by 2020, California will face a shortfall “nearly as great